Clay Willis/The Post-StandardDavid Harvey, chief executive officer of ProLiteracy, celebrates at Skiddy Park Thursday with Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner and Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney. ProLiteracy officially announced that it will move its headquarters to the Near West Side.

For Ruth Colvin, Thursday's event was a way to close the circle. She sat on an outdoor stage at Skiddy Park, where speaker after speaker praised her lifetime mission. When state Sen. John DeFrancisco described her as "royalty," hundreds burst into applause. They were part of the celebration as ProLiteracy, a global organization that Colvin helped to found, announced its impending shift from Jamesville Avenue to the Near West Side.

The move was engineered by David Harvey, chief executive officer of ProLiteracy, which teaches reading skills to adults in many countries. Harvey recalled taking a drive through Syracuse after arriving here three years ago from Washington D.C. He was startled by the way healthy city neighborhoods so abruptly descended into neglect and poverty. It was as if an invisible wall split the city, Harvey said, and it became increasingly clear to him that ProLiteracy had unfinished business in its hometown.

"We want to make a difference in this community," Harvey said.

He spoke on what was a good day for Syracuse. A stream of customers poured Thursday into a newly opened Urban Outfitters store on Walton Street, a symbol of growing energy in Armory Square. A few blocks away, Harvey and Colvin joined Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor and other civic leaders in visiting the old Case Supply warehouse. By the end of next year, it is expected to serve as the home of both ProLiteracy and WCNY, Central New York's largest public broadcasting station.

For too long, the building symbolized a civic breach. While the warehouse was easily visible from downtown, it might as well have been on the moon. Even as visionary planners and developers spent years transforming Armory Square from a stagnant city district into a downtown oasis, the near West Side - within easy walking distance - remained apart, caught up in its own struggles.

Step by step, the coalition known as the Near West Side Initiative has tried to change that dynamic. The group put together Thursday's block party, which celebrated the ProLiteracy announcement. Bands played and children bounced on inflatable trampolines. Gifford Street grocer Paul Nojaim climbed onto the Skiddy Park stage, glanced at the metropolitan leaders at his side, and said the larger community is beginning to realize what he's known throughout his life:

"This neighborhood," he said, "has the greatest people in the whole world."

Still, too much violence and suffering remains on West Side streets. Colvin knows of only one sure way to help: She has witnessed how much a life can change through basic reading skills.

Almost 50 years ago, Colvin began her literacy efforts in response to the plight of thousands in the city. She remembers being shocked to learn that at least 11,000 men and women in Syracuse were functionally illiterate. Colvin started recruiting volunteers who could help in teaching others to read and write, a campaign that rippled into a worldwide movement. Even now, in her 90s, she will readily hop onto a plane to get involved with establishing programs where they're needed.

Colvin, recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, understands Harvey's passion about bringing ProLiteracy into the heart of the city, where studies indicate that 24 percent of adults struggle with fundamental reading skills. "Who's the first teacher?" Colvin asked Thursday, and those around her responded at once: A mother. If a mom cannot read, if she does not make books and reading into part of her child's development, if she lacks the confidence or self-esteem to speak with a teacher about that child's progress ...

Patterns are set that become hard to change, patterns that Harvey sees as mortar in the wall. His reaction is simple: Colvin spent her life making Syracuse into the capital of the adult literacy movement. In this town, as much as anywhere, the wall needs to come down.